This article provides a step-by-step implementation checklist, with links to developer documentation to support your developers in adding the Tag to your site.

We recommend you review our Dotdigital Tag API: when, where and why article for an explanation of the purpose of each call, and more detail about why, when, and where they should be used.

In Marketing, in the Dotdigital Tag settings, you must:

In Personalization, you must:

You must paste the Dotdigital Tag code, including the Initialization snippet, onto every page of your website, before the closing </head> tag.

When a visitor first reaches your site and begins a browsing session, there are some details you should define for the session so that you don’t need to reference them in every subsequent tracked event. Use the ddg.configuration call to do this.

When visitors click through from a Dotdigital Marketing campaign (email or SMS) they are automatically identified by the Dotdigital Tag. For anonymous visitors who haven't clicked through from a campaign, you must provide either an email address or mobile number in order for them to be tracked.

Use the ddg.identify call to update any contact details gathered and de-anonymize the visitor.

You must track page views each time a page loads. There are different types of events you should call for specific pages.

When page-specific events are used, Personalization can automatically tell which pages have been visited. This information is used to help place content on specific pages of your site using our Site editor.

For other types of web page which aren’t included above, you can fire the ddg.track event and include information about the page in the data you send.

When a user visits a product page or a page with multiple products listed, call either ddg.productBrowse or ddg.productList to pass the product details.

These events can be used to trigger abandoned browse messages if no purchase complete event is later tracked.
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Personalization maps any product details received in these calls with the product details provided through back-end syncs to fill out product information and build recommendations.

Four attributes are used to match products passed through the Tag with products imported through back-end syncs:

For a product sent through the Tag to map to the product synced to Personalization, all four components must be the same. If one component is missed, a separate product record is generated.

To trigger abandoned cart messages and track the cart contents, cart updates must be tracked with the ddg.cartUpdate call.

Use the ddg.checkout event to track when visitors have progressed to the checkout stage, before they have completed their purchase, so checkout intent can be tracked.

Track completed purchases with the ddg.purchaseComplete event.

This event:

You can track any events not included in our predefined events using the ddg.event call.

Custom events might include:

Learn more about possible custom event types in Example custom events.

To power Personalization's product recommendations, we need the relevant data for your products. This data can be passed through the productBrowse or productList events, but we recommend you pass this data separately, through back-end processes.

This is the most important part. You must test the processes and make sure that all of the events required are being sent to Personalization. This helps to ensure that your triggers fire appropriately and that we can generate relevant recommendations.

Once visitor behavior data and product information have been passed to Personalization, you’re now ready to begin personalizing your site by creating SmartBlocks and adding them to your website with our Site Editor.